Colonial days in old New York

								

brass-bound hourglass and lighted lanthorn; and, best of all, he bore a
large klopper, or rattle, which he shook loudly and reassuringly at
each door all through the dark hours of the night, “from nine o’clock
to break of the day,” to warn both housekeepers and thieves that he was
near at hand; and as was bidden by the worshipful schepens, he called
out what o’clock, and what weather;--and thus guarded, let us leave
them sleeping, these honest Dutch home-folk, as they have now slept for
centuries in death, waiting to hear called out to them with clear voice
“at break of the day” from another world, “A fair morning, and all’s
well.”

                              CHAPTER II



                       EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE

As soon as the little American baby was born in New Netherland, he was
taken to the church by his Dutch papa, and with due array of sponsors
was christened by the domine from the doop-becken, or dipping-bowl,
in the Dutch Reformed Church. New Yorkers had a beautiful silver
doop-becken in 1695, and the church on the corner of Thirty-Eighth
Street and Madison Avenue has it still. It was made in Amsterdam from
silver coin and ornaments brought by the good folk of the Garden
Street Church as offerings. For it Domine Henricus Selyns, “of nimble
faculty,” then minister of that church, and formerly of Breuckelen,
and the first poet of Brooklyn, wrote these pious and graceful verses,
which were inscribed on the bowl:



    “Op’t blote water stelt geen hoot

      ’Twas beter noyt gebooren.

    Maer, ziet iets meerder in de Dorp

      Zo’ gaet nien noÿt verlooren.

    Hoe Christús met sÿn dierbaer Bloedt

      Mÿ reÿniglt van myn Zonden.

    En door syn Geest mÿ leven doet

      En wast mÿn Vuÿle Wonden.”
Which translated reads:--



    “Do not put your hope in simple water alone, ’twere better never to
be born.

    But behold something more in baptism, for that will prevent your
getting lost.

    How Christ’s precious blood cleanses me of my sins,

    And now I may live through His spirit and be cleansed of my vile
wounds.”
This christening was the sole social or marked event of the
kindeken’s infancy, and little else do we know of his early life. He
ate and slept, as do all infants. In cradles slept these children of
the Dutch,--deep-hooded cradles to protect from the chill draughts of
the poorly heated houses. In cradles of birch bark the Albany babies
slept; and pretty it was to see the fat little Dutch-men sleeping in
those wildwood tributes of the Indian mothers’ skill to the children of
the men who had driven the children of the redmen from their homes.
Children were respectful, almost cowed, in their bearing to their
parents, and were enjoined by ministers and magistrates to filial
obedience. When the government left the Dutch control and became
English, the Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience to parents